When a person needs health care from a medical professional, such as a doctor, nurse, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or pharmacist, he or she may not have the time or ability to schedule an appointment with and/or travel to the medical professional. The person may not be able to leave their place of work during a time at which the medical professional is available, for example, or may not be able to leave his or her children or other family members who are in need of supervision long enough to travel to the medical professional. In other cases, the health care that the person requires is so urgent that he or she cannot afford the time to travel to the medical professional; the medical professional may further not be available for an appointment soon enough. In still other cases, the reason for the health care, while still important to the person, may not rise to a level sufficient to warrant the time and expense of a doctor visit.
In response to these issues, some pharmacies offer in-store clinics at which people may request health care from an in-store medical professional, such as a nurse practitioner or physician assistant. The clinics, in some cases, do not require a pre-arranged appointment; the person may simply walk into the pharmacy and request medical care. The convenience and accessibility of these in-store clinics may help people have access to health care or advice that they otherwise would not have, as well as help reduce overall health-care costs by shifting some care away from the formality and expense of a full-blown doctor visit to a much more efficient consultation with an in-store medical professional.
The popularity of these clinics presents a problem, however: a person may arrive at a pharmacy hoping to speak to a medical professional only to find that one or more other people are already waiting for the same thing, and the person may not have enough time to wait. The clinic could attempt to address this problem by requiring or allowing people to schedule appointments with the in-store medical professionals, but scheduling appointments may run contrary to the walk-in convenience of the clinics and ultimately deter customers from seeking help. A need therefore exists for a system and method for managing walk-in medical clinic wait times.